


Always Neater in Morality Plays

by WolffyLuna



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Death, Gen, Murder, Poisoning, Snuff, Spoilers for The Eleventh Hour, Taako dies AU, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/pseuds/WolffyLuna
Summary: “It’s always neater in morality plays,” Sazed said. “You eat something, and if it’s a musical you sing one last song, then you fall over all quiet like.”
   “Food poisoning? What sort of shows did your mother take you to?”   “No, not food poisoning. ...Dying.”  “Well, aren’t you the optimist." Taako gets food poisoning. A vet assistant gets suspicious. Sazed confesses.(AU Where Sazed kills the person he intended too.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> While I don't like to over-warn, here be dragons made of arsenic and unhealthy relationships. If you don't want to read about graphic descriptions of arsenic poisoning, or really unhealthy relationships (to the point of murder), you probably don't want to read this. However, if any of that sounds good to you, enjoy!

“And once you’ve done that, all you’ve got to do is add the garnish--” Taako sprinkled salt flakes from his hand onto the chicken. They swirled in the air, falling far slower as than they should. Their colour deepened to a dark purple. As they hit the chicken, they burst into elderberries, with a spray of flowers still attached. The crowd made an appreciative ‘ooh’ sound. “--and put it in the oven.”

Taking things in and out of the oven was awkward, but he was a practiced hand at it. He backed up, and kicked the door open with his foot, so he didn’t have to turn around. That’s what made it tricky; it sat at the back of the little set, all the better for people to see what went in and out. But it meant you had to do everything backwards, so that the audience never saw your back. It was the first rule of performance that travelling troupes had taught him, when he was a backstage crew ‘volunteer.’ 

He bent over fast, limiting the time his face was out of view. One chicken went in another went out. “Here’s one I prepared earlier.” Taako held it out for the audience to get a good look, tilting the tray just as much as he could without the chicken falling off. In all respects it was identical to the chicken he’d just put in the oven; it was even still raw. With a wave of his hand, it cooked instantly. Garlic-scented steam wafted from it, over to the audience. 

Taako ripped a piece of thigh meat off, and put it in his mouth, and swallowed.

“You see, with the ‘slow cook’--” he winked at the audience “--you don’t get the overpowering heat of the garlic, but you do get the complex flavours. And the elderberries aren’t just for show, they add a nice tang to the skin.”

He spelled the chicken whole again (to a quieter, if still appreciative noise from the audience), and went to work preparing the next dish, all while keeping up the patter. 

“We’re sticking to a theme here, the next dish is elderberry meringue. Now, I’ve done this one here before, but this time I’ve added a little bit more--” with a wave of his wand, three dinner rolls turned into eggs. Cracks formed, and the yolk and whites floated out, separating themselves “--flair.” 

As he explained the finer points of the use of elderberry jam in this dish, his mouth and throat burned. Not a ‘talking to long’ burn, or even a ‘just ate too hot food’ burn, both of which he could understand, but something different and stronger. It felt almost like something eating away at his throat, taking the top layer of it off.

He tried to not let it show. Another rule of performance: the audience should never know that anything’s wrong. At a good moment, he ducked under the counter and took a swig from a waterskin. It didn’t relieve the burn, the mere action of swallowing making it worse. 

But the show must go on, et cetera et cetera. He’d gotten practiced at covering illness and injury during a show, at least. Not pushing it aside, or covering it up with the distraction of patter and spell, but plain old acting. 

It worked. From egg white whipping, right through to the last little touches of decoration, no one in the audience realised anything was amiss. If someone who knew him well, Sazed maybe, was there, might have seen his tells, but they weren’t in the audience. The burning got worse, sure, and he went a little less fancy with his spellwork, but he covered it. 

Taako didn’t make it through the salad.

It started as a rumbling as he sliced the cabbage, like he’d gulped air when he drank from the water skin. 

Then it stopped being that. It became a churning. No longer just uncomfortable, but full on nausea. Things did not plan to stay in his stomach. He could tell he’d gone pale, but the audience was far enough away that they probably couldn’t notice. 

He could cover this. He sped up the salad routine, used less flair. With a bit of luck, he could swing an intermission, and wait for this to pass. He’d once managed a show with a pretty impressive fever with that strategy. No reason he couldn’t do this now. 

His stomach had other ideas. 

Running backstage mid show wasn’t a _good_ look, but significantly better than chucking over the audience. 

He stumbled backstage. Sazed looked at him quizzically, and Taako tried to explain, but his voice wouldn’t work. Acid burned his way up his throat, and he didn’t really want to have his mouth open at that point anyway. Taako shoved Sazed in the general direction of the stage, and hoped he’d get the message. 

Their old battered chamber pot never looked so inviting. 

Food and stomach acid forced way out of his mouth, the taste burning his tongue, and staining the white ceramic. It poured out in great heaves. You could track the progress of the show, what had been cooked when, by the how digested it was. Which is not a thought Taako wanted to have at that moment. 

He leaned back, trying to get away from the smell. 

Normally, just after he’d chucked there’d be a point where he’d feel a bit better. Whatever was causing the problem was out, his stomach would be less upset, peace would. 

But this wasn’t a normal time. His stomach still did it’s uncomfortable little dance, and his throat spasmed up and down. 

Sazed’s voice came through the door separating stage and backstage. “So then you, uh, cut this to make it, er, take less time to cook--”

The show limping on was much better than it crashing to a halt, but oh gods, could that dude _not_ perform. _Work out what you’re gonna say next, don’t um and er!_ It was like watching the tree in a school play get thrust into the leading role. The show must go on, but could it go on less fucking painfully?

Plus, this whole thing was going to restart That Conversation. Taako could see how it’d play out. Sazed would preen, and claim this show was proof that he could do it. And Taako would have to be the on to hose him down: “ _You didn’t set anything on fire, and that’s a good start, but I’d already said--”_

Interpersonal _and_ physical shit going wrong, what fucking fun! 

Taako half missed the chamberpot this time.

Sazed paused. Taako couldn’t tell if it was stage fright, or if backstage wasn’t as out of earshot as he thought. 

“Uh, anyway, you need to, um--”

***

There was a point, staring into the former contents of his stomach, and listening to his driver fuck up a show, that Taako tried to work out what had went wrong. Not the Magic Quick Rise Bread, that’d take _skill_ to fuck up that badly. Maybe if he’d overdone it with the pearl ash. _Maybe._ Definitely not the salad, considering he’d eaten none of it. 

The chicken had seemed cooked, but who knows? He didn’t exactly examine it with magnifying glass, or whatever. Could have been undercooked It tasted cooked, but even the best chefs made mistakes (as loath as he was to admit that.) 

Something might have gone wrong with the elderberries, a mis-transmute-- But he hadn’t turned purple and fainted, or whatever it was that poisonous berries did to you.

Heck, it could’ve been the breakfast Sazed made. Though that was bread, and again, _skill was required to fuck that up._ And sabotage didn’t exactly seem his style. Brooding, yes, maybe even dark muttering, but not outright hurting people. He had enough trouble dressing rabbits, knowingly harming someone was just not something Taako could picture him doing. 

Taako’s thoughts were interrupted by another round of gastric distress. More retching than vomiting: there just wasn’t a whole lot in his stomach that hadn’t come up already. He leaned over the chamberpot, his insides moving counter to his outsides. It was like his stomach was being laundered by a pissed off washerwoman, who instead of wringing her husband’s neck was taking it out on the clothes. 

Spit and some other liquids forced their way out of his mouth, but his stomach didn’t stop roiling for another thirty seconds or so. 

Floating at the top of the chamberpot was a patch of blood. Disturbingly _fresh_ blood. Then again, it being not fresh would probably have been just as bed, but the stark redness drew attention to it. _Hi, I’m blood! I should be inside of you right now. Plus, this a pretty not good way for me to leave._

This was getting beyond being _just_ food poisoning. Things had reached ‘you drank from the wrong stream, bucko’ or ‘those weren’t the berries you thought they were’ levels. 

Definitely not good. 

Spit filled his mouth. Not the way spit normally does; this was an excessive amount. It dribbled out of it’s own accord. There was too much to swallow. Even if his stomach was letting anything in right now, it’d fill up with spit within ten minutes. And that was ignoring the logistical difficulty of getting that much saliva down his throat. He was going to drown in spit.

Maybe he was exaggerating. But it was a still fucking absurd amount of saliva. 

On stage, the show clattered to a halt. Sazed stopped talking for like, a whole thirty seconds. “Uh, I guess it’s time to, um, hand out the food.”

While it was looking like it was something other than food poisoning, and as much as Taako hated going back on promises of free food (bad for the brand), this was going to have to be stopped. Damage control had gone from ‘the show must go on’ and more ‘let’s avoid making the audience sick.’ That was even _worse._

Taako crawled back on stage, shuffling forward with just his arms. He didn’t trust his body to co-operate with standing up. 

Sazed looked over at him, confused. 

“We’re not actually going to hand out the food,” Taako said, voice muffled by the counter between him and the audience. “Something fucked up, mea culpa, probably not a good idea to eat it.”

Sazed kneeled down, and whispered. “Taako, what the fuck? We don’t want them to think it’s bad. We’ll just cook the chicken more.”

“It’s worse if it actually is bad and they eat it,” Taako whispered back. He clawed his way up the counter into the audience’s view. His stomach was definitely unhappy at him for doing that, but nothing had come up, so that was okay. 

The audience looked... concerned. Some looked grossed out. He definitely felt like shit, but Taako hadn’t accounted for looking like shit. “Don’t worry, when this is all sorted, I’ll do another show, with even more food.” 

And with that, Taako crawled back off stage, Sazed following.

Taako leaned against the cart wall near the chamberpot. “Well, that went fucking poorly.”

“At least it wasn’t a first impression?”

“Hmpf.”

One of the audience climbed back stage. Dirt and grass seeds covered his clothes. He was an adult, but only young. Probably an apprentice of some sort.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be back here,” Sazed said.

The half elf ignored him, and looked at Taako as he talked. “You look bad. Like, _real_ bad. We should really get the vet over.”

“The vet? I’m not a fucking dog.” Drool went down the front of Taako’s tunic as he talked. “Fuck!”

“Is the vet a cleric?” asked Sazed. 

“No, but she’s pretty dang good. Though I may be biased; I am her assistant.”

“Well here’s hoping I’ve got like kennel cough,” Taako said. 

The vet assistant scribbled something on a bit of paper, and stepped through the door. “Hey, Anna! Could you get this to the vet?” 

A halfling stepped up to the door. _Great, now half the town’s gonna be in here,_ Taako thought. “She might be out of town right now.” 

The vet assistant pressed the note into her hand. “This guy’s in real bad shape.”

Anna nodded, and walked away. 

“Can you walk?” 

Taako shrugged noncommittally.

“Well, we’re getting you over to the inn somehow. We need room to work.” 

***

Getting to the inn was... a _challenge,_ to say the least. They eventually ended up with Taako riding one of the show’s mules, carrying a chamberpot, while vet assistant lead her. Sazed followed. He hanged back, looking blank. 

The streets were quiet round Glamoursprings; people generally didn’t walk them unless there was something on. Most people lived just outside the town proper, anyway. It’d annoyed Taako in the past, made it hard to drum up attention for _Sizzle It Up!,_ but now? He was glad no one was watching this ~~dog and pony show~~ mule and chucking elf show.

His dismount was gormless, but overall successful. The innkeeper lead the mule back to stables, while the vet assistant lead Taako up. 

Taako crawled up, pausing every three or so steps. It wasn’t because of his stomach (not that he’d stopped being nauseous), he was exhausted. Whatever this was had wrung out all his energy, leaving him to drag himself upstairs, taking far too long. 

He made it to the top of them before his stomach attempted to empty itself. He just retched; it was already empty. Drool fountained out of his mouth, and dribbled down the stairs. The vet assistant pet him absentmindedly, like he was a cat. Sazed stayed at the bottom of the stairs. 

***

Anna ran into the vet a few kilometres out of town. She held out the piece of paper. “There’s a visitor in town who’s real sick.”

The vet reached down, and unfolded the piece of paper. 

“ _Patient has vomited multiple times, and has symptoms of dehydration. Vomit has blood in it. Salivation is excessive. Patient smells of garlic, but this may be unrelated._

_PS If he was a hated neighbour’s prize cow, I’d know what this was. Might be same or similar cause._

_\--Laurence”_

***

Taako sprawled diagonally across the bed, feeting hanging over the head end, and head hanging over the room’s chamber pot. Laurence had taken the one he’d carried in away, and was probably trying to work out how to burn ceramic.

The inn’s chamber pots were the sort that were decorated both outside and inside. They had a spiralling pattern of crayfish, each one of the little clawed things subtly different from the others. Taako had never quite understood why you’d paint the inside; it was a chamberpot, you don’t really want to look inside it. Now? He was just thankful he had something else to stare at instead of his drool and what little stomach acid he had left.

Sazed opened the apothecary bottle, and poured a little bit in to a waterskin. ( _“Only takes a tiny amount to kill a rat,” The apothecary had said. Sazed didn’t correct him, didn’t tell him what he was actually trying to kill. He liked being out of jail. “Put it in some dough, the little bugger’s love that”_

_“I don’t know if dough will be possible.”_

_“Well, at least put it in something that smells good.”)_

Sazed swirled it around, trying to dissolve it. It didn’t, the powdered just spun and separated into a milky-coloured suspension. Close enough. He padded over to Taako. 

“Don’t even bother holding up my hair,” Taako said. “It’s filthy already.”

Sazed didn’t know why he was doing this. He’d done the maths (when he could bring himself to look at his own calculations). That chicken had enough for forty Taakos. _I’m just trying to make it faster_. That’s what he told himself. Definitely not trying to ensure it happened, certainly not trying to stop himself backing out. 

“Here,” he said, holding out the waterskin. “Old family remedy.”

“Can’t promise it’ll stay down.” Taako took a swig, and handed it back. 

Sazed walked back to the chair, and put the waterskin under it. Wouldn’t do to confuse that one with the others. 

The ‘remedy’ came back up almost immediately. “Told you so,” Taako said, when he’d stopped retching. 

Sazed played with his hands, his nervousness at the wait spilling out his fingers. “It’s always neater in morality plays.” He didn’t entirely mean to start talking, it kind of just... happened. “You eat something, and if it’s a musical you sing one last song, then you fall over all quiet like.”

“Food poisoning? What sort of shows did your mother take you to?”

“No, not food poisoning. ...Dying.”

“Well, aren’t you the optimist. I’m gonna be fine.” (Taako said that more to convince himself than Sazed. Sazed hadn’t seen the blood.)

“Laurence doesn’t think you’re fine.” 

“Like this two bit town knows what it’s talking about. They probably only get, like, rabies and plague up here. Neither of which I have! Laurence is a vet, and a trainee one at that, and there’s a big difference between ‘sick’ and ‘dying.’” Taako paused his rant to retch again. “Fuck, you’re such a worrywart. I’m gonna be _fine;_ it’ll suck for a day or two, and then it’ll sort itself right out.” 

Sazed went back to being silent. 

***

The room was darker, the sun on the other side of the building now.

Laurence grabbed Taako’s feet, and dragged them up onto a pillow. “If you’re not going to go on your back, will you at least keep your feet up?”

Taako didn’t even bother complaining this time. He’d run out of energy. At least Laurence hadn’t tried rolling him over. He was not throwing up on himself, fuck you very much. 

Laurence stalked out. He muttered something about ‘rabid dogs being more cooperative.’ 

Taako huffed out an annoyed breath. Seemed being a vet had stripped Laurence of his bedside manner. Dragging your patients around by the feet was uncouth, in Taako’s mind. And that was like, what, the fourth time he’s pulled that shit? At least Laurence’d given up forcing crap down his throat. 

Sazed hadn’t spoken for hours, not since the whole conversation about plays. Not that Taako felt much like conversation, but it was the thought that counted, you know? It’d be nice to have something other than how ill he felt to focus on. He’d take a really dry conversation about inventory, even somthing _more boring,_ right now 

But was hard to hold a conversation with dread covering you like a blanket. He was going to die. He was going to breathe his last in some little podunk town. He was going to shuffle off this mortal coil in a dingy inn with just a terse driver for company, instead of the adoring fans he’d been planning on. 

He didn’t have any evidence of this (well, apart from the whole vomiting blood and other things.) The feeling just sat there, hovering over all his thoughts. 

He was going to die. 

At some point, far sooner than he liked, his heart was going to stop. And there was nothing he could do about it. 

Taako shivered. Not from a metaphorical, spiritual cold, the creeping chill of fear and mortality, but actual cold. He shuffled under the mattress cover, and it still felt he was out in a snow storm. His nose and ears had gone past normal cold into a burning sensation. His fingers and toes curled, to numb to move.

He looked down at his hands. They’d turned blue. “Well, would you look at that.”

***

Laurence had gone off to get something again, and Taako had finally fallen asleep. It took him awhile, kept bouncing back into wakefulness. 

Now, Sazed could say what he liked. He got up from his chair, and walked over to the foot of the bed, where Taako’s head was. 

Taako still breathed, but it was shallow, laboured, and with worryingly long pauses. Hair stuck to his face with sweat. He looked pale, like his life had been half sucked out of him. 

Sazed petted the top of his head. “Sorry about this, but it was the best way I had, you know? I had to do it, this couldn’t work out any other way. I mean, it may not be the quickest, but I wasn’t really swimming. You said it yourself, it’ll suck for a day or two. And I don’t think you’ll have to deal with this for two.”

The apothecary weighed down his pockets, far more than something it’s size should . “And this way, I don’t have to be brave. You’ve cut meat and bone before, you know how it is; you have to want to cut it. And me? Well, you’ve seen me dress rabbits, I’m too wimpy to do this any other way. With this, I just had to put it on food and... not think about. I could manage that.

“This is the best way for both of us.”

***

_You ever wake up to yourself suffocating? Maybe it’s a cat planting itself in front of your hot breath, maybe you shifted wrong and drove your face into the pillow. In that moment between sleep and not-sleep, you know something is wrong, but you can’t work it out. There’s a niggling sense, but you’d have to be more awake to put two and two together._

_Now, seeing as you’re reading this, you worked it out eventually. Right? You woke up just enough to feel the fur up your nose and fling the cat off your face. You didn’t stay like that._

_Maybe you weren’t so lucky, I don’t know. You suffocate, but you never work it out. That feeling of wrongness doesn’t wake you up enough._

_The feeling stops._

_And so do you._

_You stop doing anything. Thinking, moving breathing._

_You stop being you, just become a pile of meat and bone and hair._

_At least you’re not chucking up all the time._

***

Sazed stood on the stage. It felt... exhilarating, being up their on his own, being the centre of attention. Not confusing and off-balanced, like the first time he was thrown on. It’d only happened a day ago, but it felt longer. So much had changed.

For one, it was now _Sizzle It Up! With Sazed_. He’d only half understood why Taako felt so protective of the name, but now he understood. This show was his. It was his name (well not yet, he hadn’t painted the old sign over yet) up on stage. People were coming to see _him_ (again, not yet. But soon.) 

The crowd was a little bigger this time. Sazed didn’t fully understand it. Taako had said “Any publicity is good publicity.” Maybe it was true? 

It didn’t matter to Sazed. He had a crowd, and it was bigger than Taako’s. 

“A lot of you may have heard the sad news,” Sazed said. “News travels fast in places like these. But for those of you who haven’t: the star of this show, Taako, died last night. He had promised to do another show, to share his food with you all properly. He won’t get that chance, but I will fulfill his promise.

“Let’s sizzle it up.”


End file.
